ON THE RECORD.

Lee R. Berger

Early Man Specialist With A New View Of The Origins Of Humankind

July 09, 2000|By Peter Gorner, Tribune Science Writer.

Almost everything science believes about human evolution is wrong. The true cradle of humanity lies in the fossil-rich limestone caves of South Africa, rather than the East African sites where Richard and Mary Leakey revolutionized the study of human origins, and where Don Johanson found the 3.9 million-year-old skeleton immortalized as Lucy, the mother of us all. So says Lee Berger, 34, a Kansas native who directs the paleoanthropology unit for research and exploration at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. His startling finds and passionate theories are earning him stardom in the most contentious of sciences--paleoanthropology, where towering egos clash like cymbals and reputations may stand or fall on a single, million-year-old fragment of bone.

Q: Before you came along, the scientific view of evolution began about 4 million years ago, when small-brained hominids [transitional species between apes and humans] called australopithecines roamed much of Africa.

At least 11 species have been identified, but most scientists assume that Lucy's kind [Australopithecus afarensis--from the Afar region of Ethiopia]--begat a succession that led to our genus, Homo, as represented by Homo habilis, the first member, 2.5 million years ago.

The Leakey clan has never accepted Lucy as the true ancestral human. They're still looking for the real thing, but most scientists think she's legitimate. She is the most famous fossil ever found. Why dump her?

A: It's time to reconsider her in light of new evidence. A lot has happened since Don (Johanson ) found her in the '70s.

Back then--during the so-called East Side Story--if something didn't come out of Kenya and Tanzania [Richard Leakey's turf] or Ethiopia [Johanson's], it had nothing to do with human evolution.

Those giants and their bitter rivalry were dominating the headlines, and when the big dogs fight, the little dogs get hurt, so the rest of the science was forced to take sides. Even today, the two camps go to conferences and steadfastly ignore each other.

Then, too, consider the situation of South Africa. It was in the throes of apartheid. There was a scientific boycott against the place, while inside, it was illegal to even teach evolution.

But the scientists there--particularly my mentor Philip Tobias--quietly went about their business, collecting a secret cache of 500 hominid fossils from the five limestone caves that are the main fossil sites and waiting for the day when the country would emerge from isolation.

Q: The finds must have been an open secret. Johanson and Leakey couldn't agree on almost anything, but both of them advised you to go to South Africa if you wanted to have a career. Were they being altruistic or trying to get rid of you?

A: I think that they were recognizing that politics and personalities had forced the science to ignore 50 percent of human origins. Can you imagine any science that would, for all intents and purposes, ignore half of its evidence?

Q: The evidence you're presenting is breathing new life into your homegrown hominid, Australopithecus africanus, which started it all when Raymond Dart identified the first creature, the Taung baby, in 1925. Eventually, science finally was ready to admit that mankind had originated in Africa, but africanus was relegated to the status of an also-ran that merely wandered into extinction. You disagree?

A: Right. I think the new fossils show one critical thing: Africanus had long arms and short legs. It is built more like an upright-walking ape than even the earlier species, like Lucy. But if it's more apelike, how could it have been important to human evolution?

Because it has a more advanced head. A larger brain. Shorter face. Smaller canine teeth. And other features in the skull.

Lucy and her ilk are shaped much more like a human from the neck down, but with a relatively primitive head. Yet africanus supposedly evolved from Lucy. If so, why was its body more apelike than hers? Evolution doesn't work that way.

I think afarensis emerged in East Africa as a humanlike biped but eventually died out. A second species--africanus--emerged at almost the same time in southern Africa, which may have stayed forested longer, requiring it to retain the ability to climb trees well. Complex habitats with diverse predators and food sources may have stimulated africanus to become smarter, and its brain to grow nearly as large as that of Homo habilis.

Q: In 1995 fossilized footprints preserved for 117,000 years were discovered on the shore of a South African lagoon. They were made by a young woman whom you've dubbed Eve. What is the significance?

A: She's the earliest anatomically modern human. She could be the link between our ancestors and us.